


You Hold His Heart Now

by EveningRose309



Series: The Sacrifice Verse [5]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Balcony Scene, Christmas gift, Dancing, Implied Military Training, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Is she a child if she's a teen?, Light Angst, M/M, Masquerade, Mentions of Murder, Mentions of Sacrifice, Party, Questionable ethics, Sort Of, Spies, for the greater good, oh well, there's not much of it, they're the only ones wearing masks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:53:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21933283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EveningRose309/pseuds/EveningRose309
Summary: She was beautiful, he supposed. Women like her were meant to be beautiful.
Relationships: Original Percival Graves & Original Character(s), Original Percival Graves/Gellert Grindelwald
Series: The Sacrifice Verse [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/999351
Kudos: 7





	You Hold His Heart Now

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AlastorGrim](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlastorGrim/gifts).



> More Ava things, yay! 
> 
> And I know most of you who read my stuff are after things more along the lines of Nachtkrapp or A Deal For An Angel, but hey, a break from those. If you want more of them or want to ask questions, hit me up on my tumblr: @evening-rose-309
> 
> Anywho, enjoy <3

She was beautiful, he supposed. Women like her were meant to be beautiful. 

_ She is a monster. Do not touch her.  _

Alone, standing there by the balcony. Her hair down and braided with feathers, the stripe winding like a snake, draping all the way till the tail rested just above the curve of her waist. The dress she wore, straight cut, pelted with those same feathers, made her look like a bird. A harpy. 

A god. 

_ Do you know what she is, Graves?  _

"Evening," he greeted, sliding up to her. She answered with a smile. 

"Evening," her gaze settled back on the sky, "Mrs. Grindelwald."

Percival laughed, a soft sound half drowned by the laughter behind them. 

"Not yet," he shook his head. "I'm not  _ Mrs. Grindelwald _ yet."

"You will be, soon."

Percival was sure. 

Behind them, the gala roared and moaned, music mulling on with the blur of ever moving bodies. A gala, one he hadn't expected to have been invited to, filled with criminals and madmen dressed like courtiers and kings, in a house like a palace of Versailles. Everyone dressed in diamonds, and the two of them were sapphire and emerald. The host nowhere to be seen and Gellert having disappeared after seven rounds of waltz. Percival's feet had never felt so sore. 

And in all that time, he'd only seen Ava dance once. 

He looked at her, now, as he slid a champagne glass her way, the sparkling liquid almost mirroring the sky.

"What're doing out here?" She huffed, taking the glass. 

"Could ask you the same thing."

She drank, like a cat, barely sipping, almost bored. Used to stronger things, Percival reminded himself.  _ Much  _ stronger things. 

She reeked of those things. The very essence of her soaked, dripping with them, intoxicating. They made her unbearable, tempting, far too tempting, and he realized none too surprisingly that that was how she'd gotten this far. How she got New York's finest on their knees, begging for her, keeling for her. How simply the sight of her drove them all mad with things unspeakable and wretched. She'd given them a taste, a lick, a drizzle. They'd been drunk on her. She'd gotten them drunk. 

_ She is his jewel.  _

Just like He had. 

_ She is his weakness. Golden girl _ . 

Percival swallowed. 

_ Pretty pearl.  _

"Why did you do it?" butterfly words glided off his tongue. He felt them slip, near caught them, but couldn't. He couldn't, because they'd been fluttering and fluttering the entire night. Through his dance with Gellert, his talk with Rosier. From the moment they'd stepped into the hall, conveniently and glamorously masked, on Gellert's arm-

-from the moment he saw her dance with Him, perfectly in tune, fitted perfectly in His arms. 

"Why did you do it?" the words were soft, hardly a breath, as confused as they were when Rosier had been the one receiving them. 

_ Do you want to know why?  _

His company did not answer. Percival found himself staring at her hand as her gaze lidded but remained firmly fixed to stars. 

The hand hidden by glamours. By a ring with the cause's coat of arms. Glinting, gleaming effortlessly as it concealed the truth and promise that lie beneath. 

_ "It should come to no surprise," _ he remembered Rosier stating.  _ "A girl like her. Perfect, in every way, time be wanted by so many. You see them don't you, the men in the crowd. You saw them as she danced in the masters arms. Their eyes. They all want the same thing." _

Percival had seen them. He had seen them before, the looks, on many a man and woman in his years. A look of want. Of desire. Of lust, unbridled and uncouth. He saw them directed at both of the pair. Lusting, for if there was one thing Grindelwalds exuded, it was beauty. Elegance. Power. 

Percival was the same, except he lusted not for the woman in blue, but the man in white. 

_ "He would never let them, of course," _ Rosier continued. _ "That is of no doubt, but some like to dream. Some like to conspire. And once upon a time, her hands were useless and her legs were only good for dancing." _

He could imagine, imagine that time. Imagine a woman not draped in scarlet, but instead in ivory. He could imagine a girl, young and soft, her smile rare but innocent and kind. Her words downy soft, perhaps a bit of feather prickling, but not as silkenly harsh as they were now. He could imagine a girl so small she fit into Gellert's hand, danced on it, slept on it, whispered hopes and dreams in his ear. He could imagine a girl who was not the spider she was now. 

_ "We had to stamp that out, you see-" _ , Percival had crossed his arms,  _ "-you understand. She would not have lasted. And if she did not last, neither would the master." _

A strange thing, it was to hear. To know, to be told the fate of one man, and thus a hundred, rested in the palms of a child. A sweet little girl. Though he did understand, with how things were, back then, he knew. He knew men would do anything for power. Men like them, the generals, the purebloods. Knew that what they saw, what they had seen, was exactly what he had come to realize within these last few months. 

Yet still, he could not, could not understand… 

"Why Ava?" Because it simply confounded him. How a girl, a woman so wild could bear to be tied down in such a way. Such a cruel, cruel way. For such drastic extremes to have been molded into her head, to have such a hold on her that they dictated her every action, twisted her very thought, her heart, her desires. 

_ "I want nothing more," she snapped. "Than my Lord's victory. His vision, his freedom. I want nothing more, and by Faust, Graves, if that means I have to whore myself down to your city's very pits, if I have to kill a thousand more men, I. Will. Do. It." _

_ "Kid-" _

_ "No, no. Stop it. STOP IT. You don't understand-" _

And he still didn't understand. She'd explained it once before, but he kept not understanding-

Though he hoped tonight he would. 

Percival stared at her as she cupped the drink in her hands. You wouldn't know it from the mask- and he was sure most of the people in the room didn't -but she looked so much like Him. The way her lidded and blanked, the way shadows would play on her face, under her restless, boundless eyes. Such Grindelwald eyes, Percival thought, utterly sharp yet lifelessly dull. Such odd conditions yet present in two very strange individuals. He knew their eyes to be rare, incredibly rare, yet they both had them. Silver and gold. Glinting, forbidden treasures. 

Masked tonight, as the two of them were the dark lord's treasures and Percival was still technically a MACUSA grunt. A wolf playing mindless dog. 

He wondered what role she was down there. An empire's queen slumming with rats and rabid hounds. 

He stared at her as her gaze lowered to the glass, her lips pursed, also in the way of the man who held her heart. 

And perhaps the other way too. 

Her mouth opened and closed a few times before finally speaking. Even then though, her voice was hardly above a whisper. 

"Do you know what it's like-" she started, "-to lose a father, Graves?"

Percival said nothing, giving the barest shake of his head. She didn't see though, fingers dreamily gliding over the crystal lip. 

"I've lost two fathers- in this war."

She lifted her head. Screened though it was, her eyes scored deep into his, slowly, steadily, climbing up his face. 

"And I vowed-", his breath slipped, "-not to lose anymore."

A pause, then, before he had time to think of it, she was pushing the glass into his hands, closing hers over his own as they cupped it. 

"Take care of him, Graves," she squeezed, just a little. "You’re all he’s got."

She let go and he was granted only a moment of reprieve before her hand was on him. Her  _ black  _ hand. Death's hand. Over his heart, his treacherous, sputtering heart. 

She looked into him as she tucked His pendant into Percival's breast pocket. 

"You hold his heart now."

Then, she was gone. In a flash, a fraction, and he was left drunken, the floor gone from him as he stared into the still full glass in his palm. He stared into it, just as a warmth, a heedy heat began to pool were her hand had left. Where their coat of arms sat, his dirty little secret, the thing that kept him up late at nights, simultaneously getting him through even longer days. She left him, dizzy, and breathless, as was the staple of all with her name, of the man they both loved. 

She left before he could tell her just how wrong she was. 


End file.
